What do you know today that you didn't know yesterday?

[Angrboda]

The paperwork to create the Secret Service was on Abraham Lincoln’s desk, unsigned, the night he went with his wife to Ford’s Theater to see Our American Cousin.

More promptness would not have helped him.  The secret service as first formed in 1865 was the anti-counterfeit arm of department of treasury.    It was not tasked with presidential protection until the 20th century.

Yes, I know. Still, it is one of life's little ironies.

[Fake Messiah]

There was a Home Alone doll

[Nay_Sayer]

I learned the sabertooth tiger didn't exist. It's a sabertooth cat and even that is a bit of a misnomer.

Which sabertooth?

Smilodon

[Mister Agenda]

And quite the smile it had....

[Rev. Rye]

Reason #4492 to not visit Russia: possessing a few pills of modafinil can lead to a 3-10 year stretch in the gulag. As someone who actually uses it in their daily lives, imagine that you’re basically living Midnight Express, but it’s not for a recreational drug, it’s because of the one drug that keeps you from being sleepy 24/7.

[The Grand Nudger]

There's this bird called an ox pecker. It has a well adapted scissor shaped bill for digging ticks out of large animals hides, and claws that help it hold tight otj.

However, this is not a very good deal for those animals - as it keeps the wound open so that it can feed on their blood.


Sweet Dreams!

[Rev. Rye]

Shit I never knew about blimps/ballooning until today:

• When first pitched to Louis XVI, his initial plan was to test it using condemned criminals.
  
• The first major use of ballooning: military espionage. Including a Union Army Balloon Corps.
  
• If you remember the Monty Python clip of Ferdinand von Zeppelin going ballistic at people calling his airship a balloon, while he never tossed anyone out of the gondola for misnaming the airship, he was somehow more batshit crazy than that.
  
• The much touted safety record of blimps and zeppelins? It's not because it's intrinsically safer than planes or other means of conveyance (quite the opposite, really). It's because the Zeppelin corporation and the companies that control the few blimps around today have a shitton of rules covering when it's supposed to fly, and if it's likely that there are any averse conditions, the pilot ain't going to fly it.
  
• Notable downside of a one-week transatlantic blimp flight: no showers.
  

Other odd shit, they had Bluthner make a special aluminium piano for the Hindenburg (to keep weight down.) It was removed before the fateful final voyage, but was destroyed in an Allied air raid. And if this footage is any indication, it sounds like something The Caretaker would jizz himself over:



Admittedly, this could be the age of the film stock and soundtrack, but higher quality videos of other aluminium pianos do exist, and they sound unusual. I'd show you, but there's still one more video I'd like to show you before I hit the 3-video limit: recently unearthed footage of the disaster that actually is at a better angle than the famous footage we all know about:

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

There's this bird called an ox pecker.  It has a well adapted scissor shaped bill for digging ticks out of large animals hides, and claws that help it hold tight otj.  

However, this is not a very good deal for those animals - as it keeps the wound open so that it can feed on their blood.  


Sweet Dreams!

It may actually be beneficial to the animals involved. Some haematophages (particularly ticks and fleas) are vectors for a whole raft of disease pathogens. If the ox peckers keep blood flowing to the wound, it could help prevent infection (the anticoagulant secreted by some leech species does exactly that).

Boru

[Jehanne]

Daily upper limit for caffeine is 400 mg per day. Didn't realize that I had been exceeding that; have switched to decaffeinated Coke and am sleeping better at night! Overall, feeling slightly better, also!!

[Fake Messiah]

Chimpanzees have insane memory skills